The passage of the News Bargaining laws comes just 24 hours after laws restricting gambling advertisements.
The Australian government has introduced groundbreaking legislation that mandates tech behemoths to shell out hefty levies if they fail to ink commercial agreements with domestic media companies for distributing news content through their platforms.
Dubbed the News Bargaining Incentive, this policy imposes a 2.5% tax on advertising revenues for those companies that do not secure such deals.
Funds generated from this initiative aim to bolster Australian news media outlets, whose content plays a pivotal role in attracting users and generating ad revenue for these tech platforms.
This levy impacts industry giants including Meta, Alphabet’s Google, TikTok, and Microsoft’s LinkedIn. It targets firms with a substantial presence in social media or search services in Australia and annual local advertising revenue exceeding $250 million.
To sidestep these charges, platforms must strike deals with at least eight distinct publishers before the conclusion of their reporting period, with the value of these deals potentially offsetting their levy obligations.
The deals must support the production of news content or relate to news content produced by the publishers being made available online by the platform, the legislation said.
Spending with large publishers carries a 150 per cent offset, while spending with small and medium-sized outlets carries a 200 per cent offset.
Any single deal is also capped at 25 per cent of a platform’s levy liability.
“The legislation is here, and the message to platforms to pursue commercial deals is clear. Deals will need to be finalised before the end of a digital platform’s financial reporting period to be used to offset their liability in that period,” the government said in a statement.
“This is an important day for Australian news businesses and Australian journalism.”
The passage of the News Bargaining Incentive comes one day after parliament passed laws restricting gambling advertisements.